Bagram Airmen receive taste of America

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Jeff Szczechowski
  • 455th Expeditionary Operations Group Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) --  With hand-written messages like, “We support you 100 percent,” and “Thanks for protecting our country,” on every package, reinforcements recently arrived here from the United States.

More specifically, about 150 boxes of Girl Scout cookies sent by Brownie Troop 2859 from Marlboro, Mass., showed up at the 455th Expeditionary Operations Group, bringing a smile and a taste of America to hundreds of Airmen deployed here.

Airman 1st Class Donald Wilburn, of the 455th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, said that it was very nice of the Brownies to send the cookies, adding that “things like that are always appreciated out here.”

The cookies were originally intended for Massachusetts Army National Guard Soldiers serving in Iraq, but the “Operation Good Cookies” plan changed when the Brownies discovered that the Soldiers were on their way back home.

The mother of a Brownie contacted Tech. Sgt. Eric Grill, the noncommissioned officer in charge of public affairs at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., and he recommended they send the cookies here. Sergeant Grill was deployed here in 2003.

Doreen Keville, the inspiration behind shipping the goodies and mother of a Brownie, is married to Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert Keville, who previously spent seven months here with the 211th Military Police Battalion.

“I thought it was so ironic that this is where we ended up sending the cookies,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The Brownies collected $400 worth of cookies to send to the Airmen here.

“The girls would ask people if they would like to donate a box of cookies to the (servicemembers) overseas, and that got their attention,” wrote Mrs. Keville. “Some customers filled out their own personal notes, and the rest were done by the Brownies.”

She wrote that all of the Brownies’ moms either helped out at the cookie booth, with transporting the cookies, or with packing and mailing them.

Mrs. Keville said the idea to send cookies came from a co-worker, who mentioned that a Brownie troop in Maine had done the same thing for deployed servicemembers.

“(Because) my husband was deployed for 14 months to both Afghanistan and Iraq, I thought it was a great idea,” she wrote.

So did a large number of thankful Airmen here.

The 455th EOG Airmen said they plan to send a thank-you letter to the Brownie troop, along with an American flag flown over the base.